I'm In Stitches!

Embroidery stitches that is.  Ever since I was a little girl I have loved a needle and thread.  I remember getting a black sewing basket with pink flowers on it with embroidery thread, needles, hoops and a cross-stitch pattern book when I was in elementary school.  I took that basket with me everywhere.  So here I am, 20 plus 10 years later doing the same thing.  I think seeing some of the things that my Grandmother had made a few years back put the needle and thread itch back in my fingers.  With the resurgence of all things handcrafted, people don't normally think of hand embroidery with all the high tech - yet very expensive - embroidery machines available (that make very beautiful, neat and perfect appliques, designs, and monograms).  It's very easy to have someone embroider something for you.  I find that I love the satisfaction of doing some things myself by hand.  I love the imperfections in handmade items.  Not just imperfections in stuff I make but in any handcrafted item.  Especially if you receive an handcrafted item as a gift, it just shows you that someone really put a lot of love and cared enough to spend the amount of time it took to make something just for you. 

So after finding a few things my Grandmother stitched I went in search of some patterns.  I ended up falling in love with the patterns at Sublime Stitching.  With some of Grandma's hoops and some new thread in hand, I ordered a few patterns.  I've put my stitches on a whole bunch of stuff since then but here are a few things I've been working on lately.

 

 I love stitch samplers!  This was fun to do and I loved picking the colors for it.  That's one of my Grandmother's wooden hoops.  It' my favorite hoop :)

 

Now that it's finished I need to get a frame for it.  This will be hanging in my craft room as soon as that gets finished. . . 

I started on a pillowcase for myself this weekend. . .

This is my favorite embroidery book along with a few more of my Grandmother's embroidery hoops.  I plan on stitching some pretty things that fit inside these hoops as they will also be decorating the walls of my craft room.  Both the sampler pattern and the pattern I'm using for my pillowcase came from this book, Embroidered Effects by Jenny Hart (check out her website here).

On a side note, Ava loves to embroider.  She will sit with me for hours working on something.  Adrianna likes to do it as well but she had the attention span of a gnat so she quickly gets bored with it.  A few years ago I had them each draw a picture then I transferred the pictures onto hand towels and we embroidered a bunch of them for Christmas gifts.  They turned out very cute!  I'll have to see if I can find pictures of those . . . 

Have a great weekend!